The Lord of the Strings
by eitoph
Summary: He’s keenly aware that if he stepped back into his shoes as Lord of the Strings and presided over the puppet theatre of Booth/Brennan love, he might actually yield results. Gordon Wyatt explores the recipe for love. BB


**A/N:** I wrote this in breaks from study for my end of year exams at uni, I hope this is ample explanation for why it is as it is. It's the culmination of three separate Gordon Gordon fic ideas and it took me quite a while to work them all together, but I'm pretty happy with the finished result. My love for Stephen Fry is actually the reason I first watched Bones, so I'm ridiculously enthusiastic to get into the character and explore a little bit. I'd love to hear what you think.

* * *

  
**Ingredients (serves 6)**

6 (59g) eggs, separated

1 1/4 cups (270g) caster sugar

2 tsp cornflour

1 tsp white vinegar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

**Method**

Preheat oven to 120°C. Line an oven tray with greaseproof paper. Brush with melted butter and dust with cornflour, shaking off excess. Mark a 24cm-diameter circle on foil.

Use an electric mixer to whisk egg whites in a clean dry bowl until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating well after each addition, until meringue is thick and glossy and sugar dissolved. Rub a little meringue between fingers. If still "gritty" with sugar, continue to whisk until sugar dissolves.

Add cornflour, vinegar and vanilla and whisk until just combined.

Spoon meringue onto the foil, using the marked circle as a guide. Smooth sides and top of pavlova. Use a small spatula to forms little peaks around edge of pavlova.

Bake in oven for 11/2 hours or until pavlova is dry to the touch. Turn off oven. Leave pavlova in oven with the door ajar to cool completely. When completely cold, transfer to serving plate or store in an airtight container until required.

* * *

  
Gordon Gordon Wyatt was once a puppet master. As a practising psychiatrist and resident Lord of the Strings, he liked to think that by tugging all the right wires he could make lesser men dance to whichever rhythm he pleased.

Because in knowledge, there is power.

Gordon Gordon Wyatt endeavoured throughout his long and esteemed career to only use this power for the greater good. This is the reason he is now a chef.  
Because let's face it, it's much easier to be morally sound on the topic of sperm on a cracker than it is meddling with people's heads.  
That and being good all the time can be relentlessly boring.

With his potent ability in mind, sometimes he has to wonder why he does not intervene.  
Rather than taking the appropriate steps to turn the three ring circus of Booth/Brennan courtship into a single ring affair, he instead preaches hope and patience and rewards them with knowing looks and by saying nothing more on the matter. He is effectively doing nothing, one way or the other.  
The puppet master neglects his puppets.

It's not as though he's the only one who realises what's going on. He knows, Sweets knows, Angela knows and every single person that they encounter on a day to day basis somehow knows that they are in love. And they all regularly comment on this observation, many attempting their own intervention of sorts, with this same endgame in mind.  
So it's not like he'd be saying something that hadn't been said before, in some derivation or other.

He's keenly aware however, that if he stepped back into his shoes as Lord of the Strings and presided over the puppet theatre of Booth/Brennan love, where these others have failed, he might actually yield results.

Because his puppet mastery, a skill beyond that of any they have encountered before, is not rendered ineffective by his gut or her intellect. He knows this from the use of some carefully crafted lines (purposeless life, et. al) when the greater good (or at least, his FBI sponsored vision of the greater good) did not involve them pursuing their romantic interests in a timely fashion.  
He can justify this because at that moment in time, it would have almost certainly ended in disaster.  
But to the point, he possesses a power. A Gift. Even over them.

But now he is a chef, and he chooses to think of ingredients, rather than puppets. He has run as far and as wide as he can from responsibility, and though he knows he is the person least likely to succumb to psychological trickery, he chooses to believe this makes all the difference.  
He feels an obligation to them after all.  
Were they to be his ingredients, well, he can only imagine how that might go.

He'd begin by stirring them up.  
Anger, after all is a passionate emotion, and one he is sure he can evoke by questioning the nature and the dynamic of their partnership. By making them question the same thing. He stir and beat and whisk, because they _listen_ to him and because to them, his opinion matters.  
Oh, he'd whip each of his little egg whites into a frenzy, until either their anger (almost certainly at him) peaked. Albeit soft peaks, because he is confident in his assertion that they'd never stay angry at good old Gordon Gordon for too long.

Then he'd add the sugar. Oh the sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time. The carefully crafted explanations as to how the other demonstrates to him (and the whole world for Christ's sake) their feelings very much in favour (and in _love_) far beyond their hopeful, but painfully limited comprehension. He'd keep adding spoon by spoon, in his own special language his reassurances and explanations, carefully tailored to the requirements of Agent or Doctor, but what each needs to hear in order to understand. He's mix and fold until most doubts and his saccharine machinations dissolved into the glossy mix.

He would not send them into the metaphorical firing line entirely unprepared. He is not a romantic in the traditional sense and for this he knows to warn them of what is to come. After all, what's a mere teaspoon of acid among friends?  
So into the mix goes the vinegar and the vanilla essence, shrinky and well constructed advice, not intruding but precisely hitting that uncomfortable spot; the unfortunate truth (to borrow from popular culture) that each needs to bear in mind for the journey on.  
But just a dash, and enough to ensure the quality of the end result.

If Booth and Brennan are to be the eggs, the very charming Angela Montenegro is the cornflower. Cornflower is, after all, a tricky substance; fun when you're a child to mix it with water and see how it never quite binds with the liquid, how you almost can squeeze it dry between your fingers, watch it going from one form to the other so sinuously.  
Yes, an utterly unique entity and an endless source of intrigue, even for a man as learned as he. The only puppet that can see through the master. Even three years ago, he was rendered completely transparent at her hand, his motivations detailed before him in a way no one before or after had been able to replicate.  
Tricky as it is, necessary to the mix. Just a teaspoon or two; perhaps an understated remark over (perhaps inappropriately sized) diner food, enough to make her see his plan underway. Enough for her to become a keen observer of progress in his pending absence, and an endless source of encouragement for what is to come.

Then he'd carefully see his plan to fruition, the finishing touches, spooning out the mix inside the neat single circle drawn on baking paper (because the desired result was always that single ring affair). He'd give them suitable words of encouragement and send them on their way, each headed for the other, as had been the norm for so long before his involvement.

From there into the oven, his little scheme cooking away. The part he could have no control over, other than to watch with glee as he could see the product of his hard work emerge before him.

Like following a recipe, and a rather simple one at that. So why does he sit back and do nothing?  
Why does he still carefully construct each of his responses in a neither yay or nay manner, trying to leave behind on their relationship the smallest footprint possible?

Pavlova.  
You can get everything right, you can follow the recipe to the letter and use the finest ingredients known to man (he's pretty sure Booth and Brennan are rather fine ingredients) and yet there is something so distinctly out of your control that can see even the best of cooks (and _chefs_) disappointed.  
How is it that you can work so diligently and yet your dessert can still end up as glorified, sugary scrambled eggs, the supposed-to-be crisp and melt in your mouth shell instead a watery mess?

He's heard old wives tales about altitude and humidity and weather that are all probably ground somewhere in science, but what he knows now as a chef, is that in cooking sometimes there is something terribly _organic_ about what goes on in the kitchen. And not organic in the type-of-food-found-in-Temperance-Brennan's-cupboard kind of way either.  
No, there is something about the way that ingredients can come together independent of the chef, how pavlova on its own can set (how soufflé can rise) that is almost daunting and most certainly fascinating. It's as though it's up to them to take it upon themselves to get there, to produce that amazing dessert.

And so he worries sometimes what might happen if it's not left to them to do things at their own pace. Their relationship has that magical and organic, pavlova-like depth to it and they've come so far recently, he wonders why he should somehow misdirect them from the path they are already on.

Or perhaps he's just as invested as they are. He's a small part of this thing that they're slowly building, definitely small, but he has a role to play. He's failed as a psychiatrist to keep a distance from the patient - something he proved to himself when he agreed to take on Booth's case amidst that busy kitchen, even when he'd sworn off the profession for good.

This is why he is doing what he is doing. Biding his time and treading water, not pointing out all of those things he knows that he could, not taking advantage of position as resident consultant on the human psyche for the pair.  
He knows what he has the power to do and he knows what he has the power to undo.  
And so he does nothing.

Everyone knows they're scared. No one knows he's a little scared too.


End file.
